Winter Warm Ups
by Laura W
Summary: Just a few wintry mini-fics. More to come as I have time over the next couple weeks.


Winter Warm Ups

November 26, 2017

1.

"Captain? Are you ready to beam up? Torres and Kim are finished with the minerals transfer."

She tears her eyes away from the snow-covered plain and glances back at her First Officer. "So soon?"

He shrugs. "It went faster than they thought. Paris is already at the helm, just waiting for your orders to get back underway."

Janeway sighs, her breath forming a little cloud that hovers and swirls around her face and then dissipates on the wind. She turns back to the wide expanse of pristine snow, sparkling in the clear, crisp twilight of an alien planet. "Then I suppose we should oblige him."

Chakotay is silent for a moment, then Janeway hears the sound of his footsteps crunching through the snow toward her. "Is everything all right, Captain?" He stops beside her. "If there's something we missed…"

She shakes her head. "No. I'm just dawdling. Enjoying the fresh air."

"It is fresh," he acknowledges. Then he reaches up and pulls the collar of his Starfleet-issue parka tighter around his neck. "But brisk."

She glances up at him. "Not a fan of cold weather?"

"Not really. I grew up in a much more moderate climate. It stays warm most of the time. I don't mind the cold if I'm doing something active like skiing, but just standing here? The cold goes right through me." He makes a show of shuddering and chattering his teeth, and she smiles. Her new First Officer has a strange, unexpected, and occasionally bizarre sense of humor. It's an odd contrast from Commander Cavit's seriousness, and something she's going to have to get used to.

"Walk with me?" she asks. "The ship will still be there in ten minutes, and maybe it'll warm you up." She heads down a small hill and across the field. After a moment, he falls into step beside her.

"Not quite ready to go back to replicated air, Captain?"

"Not quite." They walk in silence for a time, their boots leaving deep prints in the unmarked snow. "It's late November on Earth," she says.

"Did you get snow where you grew up?"

"Not a lot. Southern Indiana is fairly temperate, compared to the upper Midwest. Michigan and Wisconsin are much colder and snowier. We usually didn't get more forty-five or fifty centimeters of snow over a whole winter. A single snowfall of more than fifteen centimeters could practically shut the whole state down."

"But you loved it anyway."

She gives a soft chuckle. "Not exactly. I was usually too buried in my studies to enjoy the passing seasons. Although I did enjoy winter because it gave me an excuse to drink hot chocolate and curl up with a blanket while I was studying." She glances up at the sky, now twinkling with a handful of evening stars. "I find I miss the seasons now."

He nods. "That's normal."

"Is it?"

"Of course it is. I'm actually hearing similar emotions from a lot of the crew. For all of us who come from planets with seasons, marking those seasons is a way of making sense of the passing time."

"But now we don't have that."

"No. Some people…" He glances up at the sky. "Some people are having difficulty dealing with the probable length of the journey ahead, Captain," he says softly.

"Have there been issues?" She's left the vast majority of personnel matters up to him and wonders if she should regret that decision. "Is there anything I should know about?"

He shakes his head. "No, nothing serious. But usually before a deep-space mission of any length, the crew are given tools to help them deal with the passing of time and the occasions they're missing back home. None of us were offered that preparation."

A mental accounting of all the events she's already missed, from the birth of an unknown number of puppies to her mother's birthday, flashes unbidden through her mind. She sets aside the fierce ache of longing that accompanies it. "And this is arguably the deepest of deep-space missions."

"Yes. We're going to have to find ways to help them commemorate the things they're missing. The birthdays and anniversaries, the holidays and holy days."

"The seasons," she says, only now understanding her own impulse to linger on this snow-covered planet even after their mission of the moment was complete.

"Exactly." He stops walking and she turns to face him. "I have some ideas, Captain. But it isn't going to be easy. In the closed environment of a ship where the seasons and the scenery never change, marking time becomes more difficult."

The scientist in her rises up in self-righteousness. "The scenery of deep space isn't exactly boring, Commander."

He tugs at his earlobe – a clumsy move, given that his hands are encased in thick, quilted mittens. "No, not boring," he says. "Sometimes too exciting, to be honest. But you have to admit: Looking at nothing but stars and stellar phenomena all day every day makes the concept of time passing a little bit more vague."

"More 'nebulous,' you might say," she prompts with a smirk.

He grins and shakes his head, the brief tension between them broken. "That was a terrible pun, Captain. Pardon me for saying it."

"I suppose you're forgiven for criticizing the Captain's sense of humor. But just this once."

"That's very benevolent of you, Captain."

"Don't get used to it, Commander."

He laughs out loud, a sound she's only heard a handful of times on their months-old journey. The unexpected richness of it warms her to her toes.

She takes a few more steps across the snowy plain, reveling in the feel of cold air against her cheeks. "Would you care to run your ideas past me over a cup of steaming hot chocolate, Commander?"

"I'd like that, Captain." He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his parka. "The sooner the better, actually."

"Five more minutes. Then you'll be cold enough to really enjoy the warmth."

"As you wish, Captain," he sighs, and falls into step beside her.

The planet's reddish sun sinks low in the sky behind them. Janeway watches their shadows stretch out ahead of them, swaying separately and then together as they journey ahead through unmarked and uncharted snow, touching, drifting apart, touching again, eventually becoming one over the glittering expanse.

[End part 1]


End file.
